“It doesn’t matter what you look like, what your size is, what your color is. You can be anything you want to, but you do have to work at it,” says Annie Easley’s mother to her young daughter. In the 1950’s and 60’s the black women of NASA fought against racial and gender discrimination for a place on the leading edge of math, science and technology. Be inspired this spring, as we tell the stories of how these women were influenced as young girls to eventually make critical contributions that launched US astronauts into space and returned them safely back to Earth.

Hidden Human Computers by Sue Bradford Edwards and Duchess Harris is produced with the permission of the publisher, ABDO Publishing, Minneapolis, MN